Charred human remains found in burned cabin

Charred human remains
have been found in the burned cabin where police believe fugitive ex-cop
Christopher Dorner was holed up after trading gunfire with law enforcement, authorities
said.

If the body is identified
to be Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD
officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant who is believed to be responsible for a string of revenge-fueled shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several
years ago. Four people have died, allegedly at Dorner’s hands.

The latest burst of
gunfire Tuesday came after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement
officials, shot to death a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and
seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside
Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains
east of Los Angeles, according to police.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear
gas and called for the suspect to surrender. They got no response. Then, using
a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they
reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot, officials said, and then the cabin burst into flames.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said he would not consider the manhunt
over until a body was identified as Dorner.

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

"It is a bittersweet night," Beck said as he drove to the hospital
where the injured deputy was located. The deputy is expected to survive, but it is anticipated that he'll need several surgeries. "This could have ended
much better, it could have ended worse. I feel for the family of the deputy who
lost his life."

According to a manifesto that authorities say Dorner posted on Facebook, he felt that the LAPD
unjustly fired him several years ago, after a disciplinary panel determined that he lied
in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an
arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter

The manifesto vowed "unconventional and asymmetrical
warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not
fear death as I died long ago."

Last week, authorities said they had tracked Dorner, 33, to a wooded area near Big Bear
Lake. They said they found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside, and that the only trace of the suspect was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.

On Tuesday morning, two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View
Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law
enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed
truck had been found and where police had been holding news conferences about
the manhunt.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near
the cabin, the official said. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.

Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish
and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup, authorities said. The suspect
turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the
vehicle, police said.

A short time later, authorities said, the suspect carjacked a light-colored
pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend. Rick
Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a
hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said.
Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto

"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.

"You can leave and you can take your dog," the man reportedly said. He then
sped off in the Dodge extended-cab pickup -- and quickly encountered two
Department of Fish and Wildlife trucks, officials said.

As the suspect zoomed past the officers, he rolled down his window and fired
about 15 to 20 rounds, authorities said. One of the officers jumped out and shot a high-powered
rifle at the fleeing pickup, they said, and the suspect abandoned the vehicle and took off on
foot.

Police said he ended up at the Seven Oaks Mountain Cabins, a cluster of
wood-frame buildings about halfway between Big Bear Lake and Yucaipa. The
suspect exchanged gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies as he
fled into a cabin that locals described as a single-story, multi-room
structure.

The suspect fired from the cabin, striking one deputy, law enforcement
sources said. Then he ducked out the back of the cabin, deployed a smoke bomb
and opened fire again, hitting a second deputy. Neither deputy was identified
by authorities. The suspect retreated back into the cabin.

The gun battle was captured on TV by KCAL-TV Channel 9 reporter Carter Evans, who said
he was about 200 feet from the cabin. As Evans described on air how deputies
were approaching the structure, he was interrupted by 10 seconds of gunfire.

Deputies drew their weapons and sprinted toward Evans. Someone yelled for
him to move -- then about 20 more seconds of shooting erupted.

"Hey! Get … out of here, pal," someone shouted. Evans was
unharmed.

The gunfire gave way to a tense standoff. Mountain residents locked their
doors and hunkered down.

Holly Haas, 52, who lives about a mile from where the shootout unfolded,
said she heard helicopters buzzing on and off until about 3:30 p.m. One dipped so
close to her home, she said, "I could throw a rock and hit it."

Others watched the standoff unfold on television. At her home, Candy Martin
sat down to watch TV when, to her surprise, she spotted her rental cabin -- where the suspect was believed to be holed up -- on the screen.

She said she contacted police and told them that the furnished, 85-year-old cabin had
no cable, telephone or Internet service. No one had booked it for Monday.

"There should have been nobody," she recalled saying. "Nobody
in any way."

Within hours, authorities moved in on the cabin. The fire broke out, setting
off ammunition that had apparently been inside. On TV, viewers saw only the
orange flames and curls of black smoke.

LAPD Chief Beck said his officers have been providing
around-the-clock protection for more than 50 people thought to be Dorner's
targets since the manifesto was discovered.

Police say Dorner's first victims were the daughter of the retired LAPD
official who represented him at his disciplinary hearing and her fiance. Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were
found shot to death Feb. 3 in their car in their condo complex's parking structure.

Days later, Dorner allegedly attempted to steal a boat in San Diego in a
failed bid to escape to Mexico. By Feb. 7, authorities said, he had fled to the
Inland Empire. In Corona, police said, he fired at an LAPD officer searching
for him at a gas station. About half an hour later, he allegedly opened fire on two
Riverside officers, killing Michael Crain, 34, and injuring his partner.

Early on in the manhunt, officers mistakenly fired on three people in the
Torrance area -- two Latina women and a white man -- while searching for Dorner,
who is 6 feet tall and 270 pounds.

After his truck was found in Big Bear, authorities swarmed the area, where
many cabins sit empty during the winter.

At the height of the search, more than 200 officers scoured the mountain,
while others sifted through more than 1,000 tips that poured in after officials
offered a $1-million reward.

Just as some officials began to speculate that the former cop had failed to
survive in the wilderness, Dorner apparently surfaced.

ALSO:

Dorner manhunt: Wounded deputy will need several surgeries

Dorner manhunt: Fish and Wildlife officers make the big break

Dorner manhunt: Maids stumbled on suspect, were tied up, then called 911

-- Andrew Blankstein, Joel Rubin and Ashley
Powers; with Phil Willon, Louis Sahagun, Adolfo
Flores, and Ruben Vives in San Bernardino County and Julie Cart, Matt Stevens, Kate Mather, Wesley Lowery, Samantha Schaefer, Frank Shyong and Rong-Gong Lin II

Photo: San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department public information officer Cindy Bachman updates reporters after a standoff and a shootout with
a man suspected to be former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

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Bowlus Travel Trailer Is So Retro-Cool It Hurts

Think there’s nothing better than a vintage Airstream, those old-school Twinkie-shaped campers that define Americana? Think again. The Bowlus Road Chief is even cooler, and it’s coming back.

The original Road Chief dates to the 1930s and was created by Hawley Bowlus, the aviation designer who brought us the Spirit of St. Louis. They’re also crazy expensive because they’re incredibly rare. Just 80 were built before World War II, when the company stopped production. John Long and Helena Mitchell, a husband-and-wife team of Canadian tech entrepreneurs, bought the rights and patents and are launching an update of the 1935 Vintage Bowlus Travel Trailer. They’ve made the first and have been driving around the United States. Four more are under construction, and they’re taking orders.

It’s got a vintage vibe, but the inside is thoroughly modern, with features like Wi-Fi and solar panels. There’s a full bathroom, a kitchen with two-burner stove, twin beds that can convert into a king, latch points to carry kayaks and paddle boards, polycarbonate seating fabric, and an awning. As for the lavatory, the toilet empties into a sealed container that can be emptied into a regular toilet — regular trailers use hoses that dump into special RV stations. Seals and filters keep the stink contained. The whole interior, down to the bedsheets, is fully customizable.

The whole thing stands almost eight feet tall, is 23.5 feel long, and weighs in at under 2,000 pounds. It’ll retail for around $100,000, but the price tag includes having your trailer’s name etched in the wheel skirts.

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Well: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buys Rest of NBC in Early Sale

9:28 a.m. | Updated Comcast gave NBCUniversal a $16.7 billion vote of confidence on Tuesday, agreeing to pay that sum to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in the entertainment company. The deal accelerated a sales process that was expected to take several more years.

Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, said the acquisition, which will be completed by the end of March, underscored a commitment to NBCUniversal and its highly profitable cable channels, expanding theme parks and the resurgent NBC broadcast network.

“We always thought it was a strong possibility that we’d some day own 100 percent,” Mr. Roberts said in a telephone interview.

He added that the rapidly changing television business and the growing necessity of owning content as well as the delivery systems sped up the decision. “It’s been a very smooth couple of years, and the content continues to get more valuable with new revenue streams,” he said.

Comcast also said that NBCUniversal would buy the NBC studios and offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, as well as the CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Those transactions will cost about $1.4 billion.

Mr. Roberts called the Rockefeller Plaza offices “iconic” and said it would have been “expensive to replicate” studios elsewhere for the “Today” show, “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and other programs produced there. “We’re proud to be associated with it,” Mr. Roberts said of the building.

With the office space comes naming rights for the building, according to a General Electric spokeswoman. So it is possible that one of New York’s most famous landmarks, with its giant red G.E. sign, could soon be displaying a Comcast sign instead.

When asked about a possible logo swap on the building, owned by Tishman Speyer, Mr. Roberts told CNBC, that is “not something we’re focused on talking about today.” Nevertheless, the sale was visible in a prominent way Tuesday night: the G.E. letters, which have adorned the top of 30 Rock for several decades, were not illuminated for an hour after sunset. But the lights flickered back on later in the evening.

Comcast, with a conservative, low-profile culture, had clashed with the G.E. approach, according to employees and executives in television. Comcast moved NBCUniversal’s executive offices from the 52nd floor to the 51st floor — less opulent space that features smaller executive offices and a cozy communal coffee room instead of General Electric’s lavish executive dining room.

Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in early 2011 by acquiring 51 percent of the media company from General Electric. The structure of the deal gave Comcast the option of buying out G.E. in a three-and-a-half to seven-year time frame. In part because of the clash in corporate cultures, television executives said, both sides were eager to accelerate the sale.

Price was also a factor. Mr. Roberts said he believed the stake would have cost more had Comcast waited. Also, he pointed to the company’s strong fourth-quarter earnings to be released late Tuesday afternoon, which put it in a strong position to complete the sale.

Comcast reported a near record-breaking year with $20 billion in operating cash flow in the fiscal year 2012. In the three months that ended Dec. 31, Comcast’s cash flow increased 7.3 percent to $5.3 billion. Revenue at NBCUniversal grew 4.8 percent to $6 billion.

“We’ve had two years to make the transition and to make the investments that we believe will continue to take off,” Mr. Roberts said.

The transactions with General Electric will be largely financed with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion of subsidiary senior unsecured notes to be issued to G.E. and a $2 billion in borrowings.

Even with the investment in NBCUniversal, Comcast said it would increase its dividend by 20 percent to 78 cents a share and buy back $2 billion in stock in 2013.

When it acquired the 51 percent stake two years ago, Comcast committed to paying about $6.5 billion in cash and contributed all of its cable channels, including E! and some regional sports networks, to the newly established NBCUniversal joint venture. Those channels were valued at $7.25 billion.

The transaction made Comcast, the single biggest cable provider in the United States, one of the biggest owners of cable channels, too. NBCUniversal operates the NBC broadcast network, 10 local NBC stations, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios, and a long list of other media brands.

Mr. Roberts and Michael J. Angelakis, vice chairman and chief financial officer for the Comcast Corporation, led the negotiations that began last year with Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, and Keith Sharon, the company’s chief financial officer. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners and CBRE provided financial and strategic advice.

The sale ends a long relationship between General Electric and NBC that goes back before the founding days of television. In 1926, the Radio Corporation of America created the NBC network. General Electric owned R.C.A. until 1930. It regained control of R.C.A., including NBC, in 1986, in a deal worth $6.4 billion at the time.

In a slide show on the company’s “GE Reports” Web site titled “It’s a Wrap: GE, NBC Part Ways, Together They’ve Changed History,” G.E. said the deal with Comcast “caps a historic, centurylong journey for the two companies that gave birth to modern home entertainment.”

Mr. Immelt has said that NBCUniversal did not mesh with G.E.’s core industrial businesses. That became even more apparent when the company became a minority stakeholder with no control over how the business was run, according to a person briefed on G.E.’s thinking who could not discuss private conversations publicly.

“By adding significant new capital to our balanced capital allocation plan, we can accelerate our share buyback plans while investing in growth in our core businesses,” Mr. Immelt said in a statement. He added: “For nearly 30 years, NBC — and later NBCUniversal — has been a great business for G.E. and our investors.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 13, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of the site where the NBC studios and offices are located. It is 30 Rockefeller Plaza, not 30 Rockefeller Center.

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/13/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Comcast Buys Rest Of NBC In Early Sale.

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Ex-Bell officials defend themselves as honorable public servants

Less than three years ago, they were handcuffed and taken away in a case alleged to be so extensive that the district attorney called it "corruption on steroids."

But on Monday, two of the six former Bell council members accused of misappropriating money from the small, mostly immigrant town took to the witness stand and defended themselves as honorable public servants who earned their near-$100,000 salaries by working long hours behind the scenes.

During her three days on the stand, Teresa Jacobo said she responded to constituents who called her cell and home phone at all hours. She put in time at the city's food bank, organized breast cancer awareness marches, sometimes paid for hotel rooms for the homeless and was a staunch advocate for education.

"I was working very hard to improve the lives of the citizens of Bell," she said. "I was bringing in programs and working with them to build leadership and good families, strong families."

Jacobo, 60, said she didn't question the appropriateness of her salary, which made her one of the highest-paid part-time council members in the state.

Former Councilman George Mirabal said he too worked a long, irregular schedule when it came to city affairs.

"I keep hearing time frames over and over again, but there's no clock when you're working on the council," he said Monday. "You're working on the circumstances that are facing you. If a family calls … you don't say, '4 o'clock, work's over.' "

Mirabal, 65, said he often reached out to low-income residents who didn't make it to council meetings, attended workshops to learn how to improve civic affairs and once even made a trip to a San Diego high school to research opening a similar tech charter school in Bell.

"Do you believe you gave everything you could to the citizens of Bell?" asked his attorney, Alex Kessel.

"I'd give more," Mirabal replied.

Both Mirabal and Jacobo testified that not only did they perceive their salaries to be reasonable, but they believed them to be lawful because they were drawn up by the city manager and voted on in open session with the city attorney present.

Mirabal, who once served as Bell's city clerk, even went so far as to say that he was still a firm supporter of the city charter that passed in 2005, viewing it as Bell's "constitution." In a taped interview with authorities, one of Mirabal's council colleagues — Victor Bello — said the city manager told him the charter cleared the way for higher council salaries.

Prosecutors have depicted the defendants as salary gluttons who put their city on a path toward bankruptcy. Mirabal and Jacobo, along with Bello, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Oscar Hernandez, are accused of drawing those paychecks from boards that seldom met and did little work. All face potential prison terms if convicted.

Prosecutors have cited the city's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority as a phantom committee, created only as a device for increasing the council's pay. But defense attorneys said the authority had a very real function, even in a city that contracted with an outside trash company.

Jacobo testified that she understood the introduction of that authority to be merely a legal process and that its purpose was to discuss how Bell might start its own city-run trash service.

A former contract manager for Consolidated Disposal Service testified that Bell officials had been unhappy with the response time to bulky item pickups, terminating their contract about 2005, but that it took about six years to finalize because of an agreement that automatically renewed every year.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller questioned Mirabal about the day shortly after his 2010 arrest that he voluntarily told prosecutors that no work was done on authorities outside of meetings.

Mirabal said that if he had made such a statement, it was incorrect. He said he couldn't remember what was said back then and "might have heed and hawed."

"So it's easy to remember now?" Miller asked.

"Yes, actually."

"More than two years after charges have been filed, it's easier for you to remember now that you did work outside of the meetings for the Public Finance Authority?"

"Yes, sir."

Miller later asked Mirabal to explain a paragraph included on City Council agendas that began with the phrase, "City Council members are like you."

After some clarification of the question, Mirabal answered: "That everybody is equal and that if they look into themselves, they would see us."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Haters Don't Hate Amazon (Facebook On the Other Hand ...)

Check the comments section on any tech blog: People love to hate Apple. They love to hate Microsoft. And Facebook. Each of these companies has spawned a parallel online hater community.

But Amazon? Not so much.

The Amazon haters are no doubt out there. But I contend that the intensity of that hatred just isn’t as high.

Backing me up on that is a new survey from Harris Interactive (HPOL) that found the general public respects Amazon more than any other U.S. corporation.

The marketing firm polled 19,000 U.S. residents in deep detail to find out how they felt about the country’s 60 “most visible” companies. For the first time in the “reputation quotient” poll’s 14-year history, Amazon came out on top.

Rounding out the top five were Apple, Disney, Google and Johnson & Johnson. (Apple’s number-two ranking shows great hate does not exclude great love.)

The poll — independently funded by Harris — broke down reputation into six main categories. Amazon trounced the competition in the category of “emotional appeal,” beating second-place Disney by five points on a 100-point scale – which seems bizarre considering the only contact most of us ever have with Amazon is via a cardboard box.

“Amazon is predominantly a virtual company where you don’t get to see the people. You don’t see brick and mortar,” says Robert Fronk, executive vice-president of reputation management at Harris. “For them to first of all have the highest reputation, but more importantly to be the company with far and away the highest emotional appeal, is amazing.” Harris defines emotional appeal as trust, admiration and respect, not whether you get weepy when your package arrives.

Amazon also topped the products and services category, which Fronk attributed not so much to Amazon-branded products like the Kindle, but the millions of other products it brings together and sells. Even Amazon’s customer service, which is sometimes criticized for being opaque and inaccessible, gets very high marks in the Harris survey from customers and non-customers alike.

Amazon is also helped in the overall survey results by what Fronk describes as the tech industry bump: Americans simply admire the tech industry more than any other. (In what other industry, he says, can a company take a swing at a product and miss and still get credit for taking a chance?) Industries at the bottom of the reputation rankings were tobacco in dead last, followed by government and banking.

Still, tech companies did not escape entirely unscathed. Despite its high rank, Fronk says Apple’s positive reputation is anchored in the survey by positive perceptions of its financial performance — the aspect of its business over which it has the least control. As the company’s plunging stock over the last several months shows, the investing public has no problem tarnishing the reputations of tech companies that don’t live up to expectations

“You don’t want to have the conversations about you moving from innovation and the joy you bring, to always being about the share price,” Fronk says.

Of the most talked-about tech companies, Facebook by far received the least love. While Amazon, Apple and Google all ranked in the top five with total scores above eighty out of 100, and Microsoft ranked 15th with a “good” score above 75, Facebook came in 42nd – sandwiched between Best Buy and T-Mobile – with a score of just over 65, or what Fronk described as the borderline between “average” and “poor.”

“Facebook suffers badly from lack of trust,” Fronk said.

Amazon arguably collects as much personal data about its customers as Facebook does about its users, or at least if not as much, then possibly more intimate: purchase history, product search history, home address, credit card numbers. The Harris survey didn’t ask specifically about individual companies’ use of personal data. Yet it’s hard not to infer that privacy concerns were on the minds of survey participants when answering questions about trust.

Forty-six percent of all respondents said they “definitely would trust” Amazon “to do the right thing.” Only 8 percent said the same about Facebook. Add in “probably would trust” and Amazon’s total shoots to 91 percent, while Facebook’s reaches 49 percent.

Whatever Amazon is doing, or not doing, to earn itself so many points, Facebook apparently needs to take some notes, at least according to this poll’s results. By Harris’ tally, Amazon is the first company in the survey’s history to score negligible negative results across every category. If the results are to be believed, no one really hates Amazon. Says Fronk: “There’s not a detractor base whatsoever.”

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Don Johnson gets $19 million in “Nash Bridges” lawsuit

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Don Johnson has ended his lawsuit against the company that co-produced his series “Nash Bridges” after it paid him $ 19 million.

In 2010, Rysher Productions was ordered to pay Johnson $ 23 million in profits for the show and interest. Rysher was also ordered to pay an additional $ 28.5 million in interest.

But Rysher appealed, alleging jury misconduct and that the amount of interest to which Johnson was entitled was calculated incorrectly. Jurors had initially decided to award Johnson $ 15 million before deciding, through their calculations, that he was entitled to far more.

Last year, the California Court of Appeal agreed with Rysher, saying Johnson should receive just $ 15 million, plus interest as of July 2010, when the verdict was handed down. The larger dollar amount factored in interest that would have started accruing years before the verdict.

In January, Rysher paid Johnson $ 19 million, and he signed a document bringing the dispute to a close. The court records disclosing the payment were first discovered by The Hollywood Reporter.

“Nash Bridges” aired on CBS from 1996 to 2001.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this story)

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Report Faults Priorities in Breast Cancer Research

Too little of the money the federal government spends on breast cancer research goes toward finding environmental causes of the disease and ways to prevent it, according to a new report from a group of scientists, government officials and patient advocates established by Congress to examine the research.

The report, “Breast Cancer and the Environment — Prioritizing Prevention,” published on Tuesday, focuses on environmental factors, which it defines broadly to include behaviors, like alcohol intake and exercise; exposures to chemicals like pesticides, industrial pollutants, consumer products and drugs; radiation; and social and socioeconomic factors.

The 270-page report notes that scientists have long known that genetic and environmental factors contribute individually and also interact with one another to affect breast cancer risk. Studies of women who have moved from Japan to the United States, for instance, show that their breast cancer risk increases to match that of American women. Their genetics have not changed, so something in the environment must be having an effect. But what? Not much is known about exactly what the environmental factors are or how they affect the breast.

“We know things like radiation might cause breast cancer, but we don’t know much that we can say specifically causes breast cancer in terms of chemicals,” said Michael Gould, a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a co-chairman of the 23-member committee that prepared the report.

At the two federal agencies that spend the most on breast cancer, only about 10 percent of the research in recent years involved environment and prevention. From 2008 to 2010, the National Institutes of Health spent $357 million on environmental and prevention-related research in breast cancer, about 16 percent of all the financing for the disease. From 2006 to 2010, the Department of Defense spent $52.2 million on prevention-oriented research, about 8.6 percent of the money devoted to breast cancer. Those proportions were too low, the group said, though it declined to say what the level should be.

“We’re hedging on that on purpose,” Dr. Gould said. “It wasn’t the role of the committee to suggest how much.”

He added, “We’re saying: ‘We’re not getting the job done. We don’t have the money to get the job done.’ The government will have to figure out what we need.”

Jeanne Rizzo, another member of the committee and a member of the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, said there was an urgent need to study and regulate chemical exposures and inform the public about potential risks. “We’re extending life with breast cancer, making it a chronic disease, but we’re not preventing it,” she said.

“We have to look at early life exposures, in utero, childhood, puberty, pregnancy and lactation,” Ms. Rizzo said. “Those are the periods when you get set up for breast cancer. How does a pregnant woman protect her child? How do we create policy so that she doesn’t have to be a toxicologist when she goes shopping?”

Michele Forman, a co-chairwoman of the committee and an epidemiologist and professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Texas, Austin, said the group found that breast cancer research at various government agencies was not well coordinated and that it was difficult to determine whether there was duplication of efforts.

She said that it was essential to study how environmental exposures at different times of life affected breast-cancer risk, and that certain animals were good models for human breast cancer and should be used more.

The report is the result of the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, which was passed in 2008 and required the secretary of health and human services to create a committee to study breast cancer research. A third of the members were scientists, a third were from government and a third were from advocacy groups. The advocates, Dr. Forman said, brought a sense of urgency to the group

“People who are not survivors need to have that urgency there,” she said.

Pointing to the vaccine now being offered to girls to prevent cervical cancer, Dr. Forman said, “I look forward to the day when we have an early preventive strategy for breast cancer.”

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DealBook: Nexen Secures U.S. Approval of Its Sale to Cnooc

Nexen said on Tuesday that it had received the last regulatory approval needed for its $15 billion sale to a major Chinese oil company, after the Obama administration declared the deal free from national security concerns.

With all necessary regulatory approvals in place, Nexen is set to become the latest acquisition by the Chinese oil industry, as the country seeks more and more sources of oil and natural gas to fuel its economy.

The deal is expected to close around Feb. 25.

The buyer in this transaction, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, has been among the most acquisitive. It has announced six deals in the last two years, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. Nexen, based in Calgary, is the biggest proposed deal by Cnooc since its failed attempt to buy Unocal for $18.5 billion in 2005.

Though most of its holdings are abroad, Nexen has major operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius.

The approval by the Obama administration comes two months after the Canadian government approved the deal. That was regarded as perhaps the biggest hurdle, given spurts of nationalistic concern over foreign buyers claiming big tracts of natural resources in Canada.

A review by Cfius (pronounced SIF-ee-us) is still regarded as potentially tough, however. The organization, which is chaired by the Treasury secretary, makes its decisions behind closed doors, and buyers are not always told why a deal is rejected.

But Cfius has approved several potentially sensitive deals recently, including the sale of the bankrupt car battery maker A123 Systems to the Wanxiang Group.

Lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton wrote in a note to clients on Monday that the A123 approval “is evidence that even when politics, protectionism and xenophobia all appear to be significant obstacles, Cfius will not raise objections if it believes no security issues exist.”

“With proper planning and transparency,” Cleary Gottlieb added, “even politically controversial transactions can successfully negotiate the Cfius process.”

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Grammys 2013: Fun., Mumford, Gotye lead a newer generation

Grammy Awards voters gave their top honor to British roots music band Mumford & Sons for their album "Babel" on Sunday at the 55th awards ceremony. Other top honors were distributed to a broad array of younger acts, including indie trio Fun., electronic pop artist Gotye, rapper-R&B singer Frank Ocean and rock group the Black Keys.

"We figured we weren't going to win because the Black Keys have been sweeping up all day — and deservedly so," Mumford & Sons front man Marcus Mumford said after he and his band members strode to the stage at Staples Center in Los Angeles to collect the award from last year's winner, R&B-soul singer Adele.

Pop culture historians may look back at 2013, however, as the year the Grammy Awards gave up its long fight against new forms of music dissemination, embracing songs and videos that consumers soaked up by way of YouTube and other Internet outlets as opposed to purchasing them.

PHOTOS: 2013 Grammy Award winners

"Somebody That I Used to Know," the wildly popular collaboration between Gotye and New Zealand pop singer Kimbra, took the top award presented for a single recording upon being named record of the year, which recognizes performance and record production.

"Somebody…" not only was one of the biggest-selling singles of 2012 but also has notched nearly 400 million views on YouTube, powerfully demonstrating the increasingly vital role of the "broadcast yourself" video Internet phenomenon. Different YouTube posts of Ocean's "Thinking About You" single have totaled nearly 60 million views.

New York indie rock trio Fun. was named best new artist, an acknowledgment of the good-time music the group brought to listeners and viewers last summer largely through its runaway hit single "We Are Young," which has racked up nearly 200 million YouTube views. It also was named song of the year, bringing awards for the group's songwriters, Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost and Nate Ruess, and collaborator Jeff Bhasker.

GRAMMYS 2013: Full coverage | Pre-show winners | Winners | Ballot

"Everyone can see our faces, and we are not very young — we've been doing this for 12 years," Ruess said as they collected the award.

The song's title could also serve as a theme for the evening, which was dominated by other relatively young acts in the most prestigious Grammy categories.

Singer, rapper and songwriter Ocean emerged the victor in the one category that pitted him directly against real-life rival Chris Brown, as his critically acclaimed solo debut album, "Channel Orange," won the urban contemporary album award. A few minutes later Ocean got a second Grammy with Kanye West, Jay-Z and the Dream in the rap-sung collaboration category for their single "No Church in the Wild."

GRAMMYS 2013: Winners list | Best & Worst |  Red carpet | Timeline | Fashion | Highlights

Ocean's tuxedo covered all but his hands, but it appeared as he picked up the urban album award that his left arm remained in a wrist brace he'd exhibited Thursday at rehearsals for this year's broadcast, a remnant of his scuffle last month with Brown over a parking space at a recording studio. Los Angeles Police Department investigators said Ocean informed them that he would not press charges against Brown.

It was the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach who quickly built up steam as the front-runner to dominate this year's awards, taking several statuettes barely an hour into the show, including producer of the year for himself and three with his group including rock performance, rock song and rock album for "El Camino."

The Black Keys homed in on the fundamentals of rock 'n' roll — big guitar riffs, lustful lyrics and a bevy of musical hooks on "El Camino," one of the best reviewed albums of the group's career.

FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2013

Auerbach picked up another award as producer of the blues album winner, Dr. John's "Locked Down."

Carrie Underwood grabbed the country solo performance Grammy for the title track from her album "Blown Away," which also won the country song award for writers Josh Kear and Chris Tompkins earlier during the pre-telecast ceremony at Nokia Theatre, across the street from Staples Center.

The Zac Brown Band added to its growing place as a new-generation country powerhouse with a win of the country album trophy for its "Uncaged," built on muscular Southern rock guitar riffs, elaborate multipart vocal harmonies and jam-band instrumental excursions.

Last year's big winner, Adele, collected the first statuette of the night for her single "Set Fire to the Rain" in the pop solo performance category.

The show got off to an eye-popping start with a Cirque du Soleil-inspired performance by Taylor Swift of her nominated single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The preponderance of youthful acts not broadly known to mainstream TV audiences heightened the use of cross-generational pairings. Rising songwriter and singer Ed Sheeran shared the stage early with veteran Grammy darling Elton John, while Bruno Mars teamed with Sting and Rihanna in a Bob Marley tribute later in the show. Several members of Americana acts, including Alabama Shakes and Mumford & Sons, sang alongside veterans John, Mavis Staples and T Bone Burnett in a salute to drummer Levon Helm of the Band.

But it was the young guns to whom the evening — and perhaps the future — of the Grammy Awards belonged.

The Grammys are determined by about 13,000 voting members of the Recording Academy. The eligibility period for nominated recordings was Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept. 30, 2012. The show aired on CBS live except on the West Coast, which gets a tape delay.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Twitter: @RandyLewis2

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